North Face Athlete Named Adventurer of the Year

The North Face athlete Cory Richards has been named Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic and is also in contention for the National Geographic Adventurer of the Year People's Choice Award.

National Geographic has crowned an Adventurer of the Year for six years. The award goes to individuals chosen for extraordinary achievement in exploration, conservation and adventure sports. Richards is not the first North Face athlete to win this honor, previous North Face athletes recognized include Diane Van Deren and Alex Honnold.

Richards' notable adventure of 2011 was his first ever winter ascent of Pakistan's Gasherbrum II, the world's 13th tallest mountain. Over the three-day ascent from base camp, Richards and his team faced cold, blizzards and a Class 4 avalanche.

Richards and his team of Simone Moro and Denis Urubko filmed the trek and the footage was used in the documentary “Cold.” The documentary received a number of awards at the 2011 Banff Film Festival, the Grand Prize, Best Film in the Climbing category and the Audio Post-Production Scholarship.